NASCAR Betting – Mr. Consistency Takes The Checkers At Texas

Online betting players will get to see how the new spoiler will really affect the Sprint Cup cars when the green flag drops on the Samsung Mobile 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, a 1.5-mile high-banked track with plenty of speed. But spoiler or not, it’s going to take someone who knows his way around Texas to get to Victory Lane, and this week’s winner is a top-10 machine who will finally get a win this week.

• WHAT:NASCAR betting
• WHEN: Sunday, April 18, 3:00 PM ET
• WHERE: Texas Motor Speedway, Fort Worth, TX
• DEFENDING CHAMPION: Jeff Gordon

Jimmie Johnson is the favorite at +500, just ahead of Hendrick teammate Jeff Gordon, who earned his first career win at Texas by leading 105 laps to beat Johnson to the checkered flag. Johnson’s 9.9 average finish in eight spring races is second only to Denny Hamlin’s 7.5 in four races, which gives him the edge over Gordon, who never really fares well here, but is still listed at +600 after finishing second at Phoenix last week, and he has finished in the top three in his last two races.

The Busch brothers, Kurt and Kyle, both have sports betting odds of +800, and Kurt won the 2009 fall race, but he’s fallen back in the standings due to a couple of bad finishes, including a 35th-place run at Phoenix last week. Kyle had the Phoenix race sewn up before a late caution and a call for four tires put him back in the back, settling for an eighth-place result. Kyle finished 18th in last year’s spring race, and has just one top-10 in five spring races here, but you should take him over his older brother.

Check out Matt Kenseth and Tony Stewart at +1200, and Stewart has been incredibly quiet lately with an average finish of 24.5 at Martinsville and Phoenix. The No.14 driver won the 2006 fall race here, and he’s solid in the spring with seven top-10s in 11 starts, including last year’s fourth-place run. However, you should probably take Kenseth in your sportsbook as he won this race in 2002, and his 11.0 average in 10 spring races at Texas is second to Johnson and Hamlin, who struggled with his knee and a poor car at Phoenix.

Don’t count out Carl Edwards at +1500, Jeff Burton at +1800, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. at +2000, and all three have won here before. Edwards swept the 2008 races and finished 10th in the 2009 spring race, but he finished 39th in the fall and hasn’t won since the season finale at Homestead-Miami in 2008. Burton won the first race here in 1997, and then he won the spring race in 2007, but he hasn’t finished higher than 20th just once in his last four races. The best bet may be Earnhardt Jr., who took the checkered flag in 2000, and he has five top-10s and a pair of poles in 10 spring races at Texas.

Your longshot picks should be last week’s winner Ryan Newman and Joey Logano, who both come in at +3000. Newman won this race in 2003, and he’ll be trying to ride the wave of his unlikely victory at Phoenix. But the play in this group should be Logano, who has four top-10s this season, including two in a row, anfd he improved from a 30th-place run in the spring race to a 19th-place finish in the fall. The reigning Rookie of the Year looks like he belongs now, and he’ll win a race this year, maybe two.

Lee-Roy’s Pick: Matt Kenseth leads the series with teammate Greg Biffle in top-10s with six, and the No.17 driver has been knocking at the door. He’s very good at Texas, and his duel with Johnson in the 2007 fall race is one of the greatest finishes of the last few years. The No.17 driver will turn his consistency into a well-deserved checkered flag this week, so go with Matt Kenseth in your sports betting picks